


Complications May Arise In The Dark

by ItsSweaterWeather



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M, Post-The Final Problem, Sexy Times To Follow, Sherlolly Freeform, Slow Burn, Vamp!lock, Vampire angst, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-25 02:26:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12026151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsSweaterWeather/pseuds/ItsSweaterWeather
Summary: in the lab...On instinct, Molly slid her hands off the stainless steel, putting inches more distance between them, and wrapped her arms around her waist. She was colder than normal in the perpetually chilled room, her cardigan and lab coat doing little to thaw the ice creeping up her spine. Her body geared up for the inevitable fight, veins pumping blood to her brain. Think! it shouted at her. Anticipate! it warned. The muscles of her legs twitched. Run! they advised. But her heart…Molly’s heart couldn’t bear the thought of those hands, so gentle with Rosie, hurting her in any way so she stood her ground, albeit perfectly aware that the lab’s center worktop wouldn’t keep her out of his grasp should he decide otherwise. Trust was a wager they’d made, again and again, throughout their long history, rarely knowing what game the other played.to be continued...Sexy times shall ensue (and rating will change). It's just... complicated, as one might imagine, under their circumstances.





	1. Chapter 1

### In the lab... 12:41am

“I know who you are. Or, rather, _what_ you are.”

The words were soft but weighted with awe. Still, they sailed around the lab, slipping over glass and skimming lino, each syllable coming round to settle in the hushed space between them. Only the humming centrifuge and the thunder of blood in her ears disturbed their shaky truce. 

He leaned in, large hands spread wide on the worktop. His body pitched slightly forward, a move he’d made hundreds, thousands of times over the course of their acquaintance, leaning in to make a sly, private comment or chuckle at her quiet retort. Now, though? Every movement - his and hers - was a challenge. His latest exposed the deep suprasternal notch at the open collar of his fine shirt.

 _Show off!_ Molly scoffed to herself. She peeled her eyes from his neck and focused instead, as she often did, on his beautiful hands. Frosty skin stretched over long, delicate phalanxes. His wide, ovoid nail beds, smooth as marble, were subtly groomed, not fussed with. And, days after Sherrinford, it came as no surprise to her that his knuckles were still abraided. Raw pink patches indicated where he’d knocked off scabs during the normal course of his recovery - or picked at them, more likely, anxious to be free of his talk therapy sessions.

She felt sorry for him; outward introspection wasn’t his normal milieu.

He tapped each finger in languid rhythm on the cool silver of the worktop, clearly enjoying her attention.

_Show off._

Molly’s eyes roamed his arms, from cuffed wrist to the crease at his elbows, but she resisted the urge to look further, to look _anywhere_  across his buttoned up front, failed. His abdomen worked like a bellow, the muscles expanding and contracting as he collected air then expelled it over her face. The little pearl-like disks strained to do the job for which they'd been assigned, stretching the placket in an obscene tug of war. If she glanced higher, she'd catch the faint shadows seeping through the white broadcloth, a hint of the beautifully pigmented areoles surrounding his nipples, and the nipples themselves peaked from adrenaline.

 _Desire_ , her body corrected. _No!_ her brain countered. Thinking on that possibility was too dangerous now.

A minor alarm pinged on one of the lab machines pulling Molly out of her reverie and away from his taut pectorals. Safer to stay focused on his hands, to watch for the little tells that preceded sudden movement. He always flattened the third digit of his left hand just before reaching out with his right…

Those fingers. She knew them better than her own, felt protective of their delicate beauty, coveted them from the moment they’d wrapped around the slim handle of a riding crop. Not _'a'_ riding crop; _'his'_ riding crop. She’d squandered research time to covert appreciation of his digits as they fiddled with knobs and prepared slides.

Those hands had the power to quell her anxieties - the minor ones, anyway. When he steepled his fingers under his chin, contemplating a puzzle or traveling the gilt halls of his mind palace, Molly basked in his quiet countenance, always aware that the tides would eventually change, the abrupt shift in his mood inevitable. While his brain was active but his body calm, however, his graceful serenity made her forget their truth - that one of them was always lying.

What caused her the most grief, however, was the one act she rarely saw, but oh, how she tried! Watching him finger the rosin for his violin was the most exquisite torture. He'd swaddle the little amber disk in cloth then cradled it, like a precious gem, in the fingertips of his left hand. The slow, repetitive slide and retreat of the rosin across the hair of his bow was a seductive dance that made Molly’s body quiver. Hairs at the nape of her own neck became increasingly jealous with each stroke he lavished on that bow.

His hands made love to the violin, its knobs and neck. Its body. And soul.

Those hands had also wielded a saber in defense of a rather indefensible traitor to the Crown.

She preferred not to think on the female corpse with no face, allowing only that she _did_ have a face and that she _was_ still alive. Somewhere. He’d admitted as much in a moment of transparency so characteristic of his detoxes, this one coming several evenings after that Christmas he rarely spoke of, the one that began with the Watsons visiting his parent’s country home and ended with Mycroft summoning her to Baker Street to monitor the first ninety-six or so hours of his detox. By that time, theirs was a well-oiled routine, a heady, cloistered existence within the mismatched wallpapers of 221b, suffused with gentle words, angry outbursts, and all too brief physical contact. There was music that never soothed, meals that were never eaten. And tea, copious amounts of Mrs. Hudson’s tea, which seemed to do both of them the best.

On instinct, Molly slid her hands off the stainless steel, putting inches more distance between them. and wrapped her arms around her waist. She was colder than normal in the perpetually chilled room, her cardigan and lab coat doing little to thaw the ice creeping up her spine. Her body geared up for the inevitable fight, veins pumping blood to her brain. _Think!_ it shouted at her. _Anticipate!_ it warned. The muscles of her legs twitched. _Run!_ they advised. But her heart…

Molly’s heart couldn’t bear the thought of those hands, so gentle with Rosie, hurting her in any way so she stood her ground, albeit perfectly aware that the lab’s center worktop wouldn’t keep her out of his grasp should he decide otherwise. Trust was a wager they’d made, again and again, throughout their long history, rarely knowing what game the other played.

Tonight, though, they held the same hand.

 _Love!_ her heart whispered.

“Molly. Please!” Sherlock’s voice was raspy, the same uneven sound that bled through her mobile the afternoon he waited, counting down the seconds, for her to return his “I love you”.

She rubbed at the ache in the center of her chest, taking her eyes off his hands for a brief moment, sealing her fate.

Had she not been seduced by her name tumbling out of his mouth, the syllables coated in his honeyed baritone, Molly would’ve noticed the pad of his third distal phalange pressing on the cool steel, pushing the hard knob of his knuckle upward, just before he launched himself over the worktop, his unbuttoned Belstaff fanning out like wings. His movements were so fluid; only a few sheets of her research were disrupted. Everything else, the Petri dishes, the pipettes, a bottle of fixative, stayed perfectly still.

Sherlock’s hands, those glorious hands, were at her shoulders. She couldn’t escape. His fingers clamped down, threatening to crush her bones. She didn’t want to break free. His thumbs grazed the sensitive skin covering her clavicle, disarming her flight response with a simple, honest touch.

Molly sucked in a breath. She closed her eyes as the oxygenated courage filled her lungs. She tilted her head and bared her neck. She was as good as caught now. He not only had the advantage of height and weight on her, he’d also blocked her access to the lab’s lone point of entry. In a way, it was a relief. How long had they played this game of cat and mouse, always tempting the other to tell the truth? Now, here they were. Fitting, really, that this confrontation should take place in Bart’s lab, her sanctuary, his domain - the room in which they’d first met almost a decade ago. There was no danger of discovery. The corridor beyond the sliver of window embedded in the door was dark, the lab staff having called it an evening well before half-past midnight.

Sherlock knew though, knew that work habits kept her at research long after even the night cleaners had mopped and tidied their way around the lab. And he’d waited. Molly waited, too, a low-grade thrum plucking at her insides the moment she heard the elevator doors slide shut behind him. He thought himself undetectable, prowling the floor for over an hour before finally appearing in the lab five minutes ago.

But Molly knew. She always knew. He'd branded her heart somehow, the damned muscle beating out the syllables of his name whenever he was within a few feet.

_A football pitch's length..._

_Well,_ she mused, _if this is the way we're going to end, better in his arms than at the knife-edge of his displeasure._ She opened her eyes, fixing him with the mahogany warmth of her love - she’d never not loved him - and spoke. “How long have you known?”

His eyes went wide for a split second, nothing more than a spasm of translucent lids hugging the upper rim of ghost gray irises. He caught himself, rolled the dark shutters of caution back down. “Two seconds. You just confirmed it.”

His breath sputtered, caught somewhere between his trachea and his teeth. Casual observers wouldn't notice his struggle to regain control. Sherlock was a master of regulating his physiological responses, had to be in his line of work, such as it was. Weakness was a failure. And caring was not an advantage. Molly registered the rapid pulse in Sherlock’s carotid artery but didn’t speak. She was preoccupied with keeping her own reactions in check - the flaring of her nostrils, the rapid dilation of her pupils, the faint blue glow under her fingernails - and preserving their fragile contact.

“I want to hear you say it, Molly.” It was a request, not an order, so unlike the imperious Sherlock who commanded similar interactions, quests for data that lead him to eliminate the impossible. Right now, anything was possible.

_Everything._

She owed him the truth because he’d asked it of her rather than deducing it. Molly let a beat pass before confirming what Sherlock already knew. She could live lifetimes in that nanosecond, watching the flicker behind his intoxicating eyes. She would gladly go deaf in the whirl of his massive intellect as he tried, and failed, to refute her pedigree. In that breath, the future was a promise, they could return to _Sherlock & Molly,_ perpetually circling, never landing; the punchline to surreptitious jokes made by John and Greg. Hell, they could even go back to a few days ago, when Eurus exposed her as the emotional context hovering about the coffin room, and Sherlock's brain.

_His heart._

But Molly's time was up. _Their_ time. She steeled herself against the future, not for it. The time between her saying so and him making up his mind to act on the information would slip through their fingers quicker than water. “I’m a vampire,” she said, strong and clear. Why equivocate? He would kill her or she would kill him. Neither option held any appeal. 

And they were out of options.

Sherlock’s hands floated down her arms and around her waist, his movements playing in slow-motion despite being quick as lighting. He pulled her to him, held her against his chest, the tails  of his coat protecting them both. He eased his grip, signaling that she was no longer the hunted, that he was no longer the hunter. “No,” he breathed, the heat from his mouth settling atop her head, a halo she had no right to wear, “I want to hear you say _the_ words.”

The ebb and flow of his blood beat at a low register under her cheek; the mournful notes of a violin. Humans needed stethoscopes to make out the lub-dub buried deep in the chest but even with such amplification devices, they remained deaf to the _whoosh!_ of actual blood as it pushed against artery walls, the tissue expanding just a bit to alleviate the force, and the _shhhh!_  of oxygen-depleted liquid fighting gravity, traveling highways of blue-green veins back to the center of the body.

Such a primal sound. It became louder in the dark. No wonder vampires spent most of their lives (deaths? after-lives?) cloaked in the night. That sound worked the nervous system of the undead like opium manipulated the brains of the living.

Molly heard Sherlock’s request in that most intimate of sound and spoke to his heart, “I love you.”


	2. Chapter 2

### In the lab...

The black fog clouding his brain had lifted. But there was still the problem of the pain - and the paralysis.

Sherlock took several quick breaths trying to flood his muscles with oxygen, jump-start his body, knowing full well the effort was futile. What was it about the women in his life all knowing precisely how to physically disable him - him! - the world’s only consulting detective? He had a substantial amount of height on the lot of them: The Woman, Mary, Mrs. Hudson, Eurus.

 _Molly_. The shortest of the bunch. And most lethal. She’d knocked him cold with a two-fingered stab to the neck. Down he went, hitting his skull on the floor with a sickening, muffled slosh. His gray matter absorbed the impact. An aching numbness followed, radiating outward, rippling along his nervous system in slow motion like a fresh top sheet snapped over a clean bed.

 _Women,_ he scoffed in silent agony.

Experience told him there was nothing to be done except wait. And try not to fall asleep; he'd given her enough of a headstart. The tingling would subside in four minutes, give or take. If not, he'd force his body to work, ignore the pins and needles piercing his extremities from the inside out. Regardless, finding her began with the arduous process of scraping himself off the tiles, so best to not slip into unconsciousness.

He'd had a plan for this confrontation before he was so rudely incapacitated. Now, though, he'd have to formulate a new strategy. In the meantime, he’d concentrate on the staying awake bit, making mental note of his surroundings to pass the time: cool lino under cheek, faint whiff of pine-scented disinfectant, right arm bent at an uncomfortable angle under the left side of body, lights switched off.

 _Well,_ he reasoned, _at least she still thought enough of me to turn down the overheads._

Of course, nothing about crumpling to the floor in a heap at the hands of an otherwise compassionate, _undead_ pathologist was comfortable. Fixating on _that_ reality, however, only intensified the ache at the center of his chest. The one he'd nursed since the day they'd met.

### Meanwhile...

“Oh. My. Goodness! What was he thinking?!” Molly threw an arm over her eyes and collapsed onto the love seat. She kicked off her sensible professional clogs and crossed her ankles. Wiggling her toes and flexing her calves did little to release the tension coursing through her muscles. “I could’ve killed him!”

“Hmm mmm. And you’re dead certain you didn’t?” her companion asked.

Molly lifted her elbow from her face and cracked one eye open in silent retort.

“Em. Sorry.”

“Yes. I’m sure.” Her reply was tinged with guilt even though she’d knocked him flat for his own good.

Her reasons didn’t make it any less difficult to deliver a jab to Sherlock's windpipe and watch as his legs buckled underneath him. Hours later, she still felt quite woozy recalling the site of his skull bouncing off the lino. That glorious mop of his, the darkest sable shot through with copper strands if the light skimmed his head just right, had taunted Molly for years. Her fingers itched to thread through and tug, sending tiny electric shocks over his scalp. Maybe eliciting a moan from his mouth. Or a low growl...

Instead, she'd chopped him, watched as his head hit the floor, tossed like a child's ball. The noise was far from the _thwack!_ one assumed bone made as it met an immovable object. There was no sound at all, really, Not from her perspective, anyway. She was too focused on his vitals, watching his body consume data long before his mind got around to the task. The sensation, a simultaneous combination of contact and absorption, was smothered by the tile’s composite makeup, yet amplified by the thick concrete floor and walls. Molly _experienced_ his pain rather than heard it, a thrum deep in the veins that made her heart pound and her stomach flip.

From Molly's point of view, the problem with being undead wasn't that her life would forever be unfurling out into infinity. No. The problem was the unbearable caring. The loving. How many times would she have to go through this; falling in love? And losing? She was young by vampiric standards - just shy of 150 years - and had never been in love. No really.

Until _him_.

How vulnerable he looked, his Belstaff rumpled in an undignified manner, his limbs akimbo. _Beautiful_. She knelt down next to him, smoothed an errant lock from his forehead, watched as his lids fluttered under her touch. His mouth groped at words between gasps for air. She'd cupped his chin and whispered soothing sounds, rubbing her thumb along his jaw in an attempt to comfort. She begged him to relax and apologized for her surprise attack, all the while keeping track of time. How much time did she have to get away? How much time did she have before he needed medical attention? The irony would've made Sherlock laugh had he not be the subject of her worry - and her assault.

She lost herself in the feel of him in her hands as seconds ticked by; the firm jaw, the faint scratch of stubble. His head lolled from side to side, warm lips brushing her fingers, her palm. _An accident,_ she told herself, _he's semi-conscious, doesn't know what he's doing._  

What would it be like to trace the plush bow with the tip of her tongue?

Or suck the bottom one into her own mouth...

She shook the thought from her head as soon as it formed, got to her feet and strode out of the lab, quick enough to get away but not draw attention to herself. She was chatty with overnight security; any deviation from her normal routine would've drawn attention, sent a curious guard up to the lab to make sure Molly hadn't been frightened by a wandering psych patient.

Again, the irony. She'd just dropped the textbook case study of a  _psych patient_ to the floor, a man who had at least eight inches on her, without drawing a fang.

But she couldn't leave well enough alone, for _her_ own good. She turned back to the lab after calling the elevator. Had the doors opened right away, she'd have left without giving the world's only consulting detective a second thought.

No, she wouldn't. Molly would've let the elevator go and returned to the lab anyway, switched off the lights. Sherlock would be in pain when he came to. The ambient glow from the lab's under-cupboard emergency lighting would ease him back into consciousness. She couldn't bear the thought of him waking under the harsh glare of overhead fluorescents. Short of sitting on a stool and waiting patiently for him to get to his feet and kill her, turning off the work lights was the least she could do.

“I mean, dear Lord!" Molly wailed, "The man was coming in for a snog!”

“And this is bad why?”

“— coming in _hard_ for a snog,” she clarified. “Again, what was Sherlock thinking?” Feet flung back to the floor, Molly folded her arms over the armrest and watched as tea was poured, resting her chin atop her folded hands. “He wasn’t using his brain,” she murmured.

“No.” The response was sly even without an assist from the woman’s arched brow. “He certainly wasn’t."

“Remind me, again, why we’re friends?” Molly’s tone was salty but her face couldn’t hold onto the ire. Her lips creased into a smile despite her jangling nerves. She accepted the steaming mug of tea and tucked her aubergine-clad legs under the bell of her twill skirt. This was nice, having somewhere to go, someone with whom she could commiserate. She’d had few friends over the last century. Self-preservation dictated that she not get close to humans, not succumb to the madness of caring; watching as others enjoyed and battled the normal effects of living, aging.

_Loving._

There was the woman that made her, of course. Alice. She’d found Molly behind the morgue, pummeled close to disfigurement like a heap of crushed wine grapes.

Alice, like Molly, concealed her identity, her sex, under men’s clothing; the only way to live and work independently at a time when women remained tethered to men - be it their fathers, their husbands or their brothers. Having lost her mother in childbirth and her father a decade and a half later to cholera, Molly was forced to fend for herself. She loved her father. He'd taught her to engage in philosophical debate, appreciate challenging music, and punch boys in the nether regions should they get too close. But he’d left her penniless, trying to drink away the loss of his beloved wife. Most of his wages went directly to The Clock And Bottle on Bethnal Green's High Street.

The rest of his wages went to books.

In spite of his demons, Molly's father was devoted to expanding his daughter's mind and her opportunities, such as they were for the only child - and female at that! - of the widowed supervisor at a medical supplies factory.

She'd had a difficult childhood but it wasn't _bad._ Molly always considered herself lucky to have grown up in a manufacturing slum because _her_ slum was home to the philanthropic do-goodness of Oxford House. When he wasn't working or pickled, her dad took her to hear lectures and concerts on its grounds. 

When he died, Molly sold all of her father's things. Except for the books. Those were her birthright and, she knew, her only chance of survival outside of a whorehouse or scullery. The meager bit of blunt she'd made was enough for a month's rent, a scarce amount of food and a suit. So, she bought a suit.

Her story was simple, believable. She informed the shop owner that the garment was for her twin brother, sick at home under the haze of consumption, begging to be waked in fine cloth instead of his sick gown.

> “A bit eccentric, Miss, fitting the suit to you instead of the boy.”  
>  “Oh, sir, please! My brother can’t leave the bed.” Molly's dramatic flair was fit for a Covent Garden stage in that moment. Too bad it was wasted on a cheap tailor. “You wouldn’t want to deny a dying man his last request would you?”  
>  “Hmmm…”  
>  “And I can pay half now, half upon completion,” she added.  
>  “Well, I suppose it is in service to our Lord on high,” he said piously, eyeing her little purse. “But your father should’ve accompanied you here. It’s a bit unseemly’s all I’m saying.”  
>  “Our da’s dead. Just me mum and I…and Charlie. Poor sweet Charlie.”  
>  “Well, lucky for you, my Gerti’s a seamstress. She'll take your measurements, fit you up. She's been doing quite a bit of this work lately. Seems a lot of young men dying round here, leaving only their twin sister's to manage last wishes and all.”  
>  “Such terrible coincidences,” Molly agreed.  
>  “Yes. Isn’t it…”

Her deception garnered Molly access to employers offering well-paying work - to men; funds managers at banks, junior clerks at Parliament, and the chief librarian at King’s College. Heaven was to be had amongst the stacks at university. And she could’ve lived out her years in monk-like bliss cataloging books, watching each class filter in and out, marking time against the shelves she’d read. And dodging invitations from the student librarians to have a bathe in the country.

The ruse worked for two solid years. On the last evening of the spring semester of 1889, the boys enacted a cheeky plan. They hoisted her onto their shoulders, marched over to the Thames intent on putting her in the drink. Everyone would’ve had a right soggy laugh had it not been for rat faced James. It was that little weasel’s idea to strip her bare and hide her suit once they’d gotten to the shoreline. Even with her knowledge of male anatomy, there was nothing Molly could do to fend off the playful attack. Her slight frame was no match for eight grown men - even if they were still just boys, really - grabbing and pulling, popping the buttons of her shirt. Tears and screams were not an option.

She was a boy in this world now. No longer a girl. Never again just a girl.

 _Chin up_ she coached herself. _Suffer the ignominy of being thrown into the river's sludge, then laugh in good humor when it was all over, and slip away home before the boys drag you back to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for another dram._ Everything would be fine, she repeated, once she'd broken free, ran to the water herself, and appeased their thirst to watch someone else’s humiliation.

They were, at their core, all good lads. Just a frenzied, playful mob…

Too many legs tangled up in her trousers, too many hands took liberties with her body. One boy ripped her collar. Another pulled at her short hair. James delivered the final blow, wrenching the shirt’s placket from her clenched fists, pushing her to the ground and exposing the linen bandage wrapped around her chest. The strips kept her breasts, as small as they were, in check. Undetectable.

She remembered little of what came next. The purpling sky above her blurred into hard punches and ferocious kicks until she slipped into unconsciousness. She remembered thinking that she had a book of seventeenth-century poetry back at her flat. Who'd return it in her absence? What would become of Violet, the little tabby she fed out the side door of the library?

Hours later, Molly surfaced, briefly. Candles played shadow puppets with the mortar joints of the brick walls. She registered cool hands stripping what remained of the blood-soaked fabric from her body and cleaning all manner of filth from her skin, her hair, the insides of her mouth and nostrils. Such cool hands. Gentle. A mother's touch...

Molly was swollen, bleeding internally, and moaning for God or the Devil to take her that night.

Both showed up in the guise of Alice, a formidable woman. And an even more intimidating man. The vampire was Molly’s only close friend, until recently…

She swallowed. No sense going back in time when her future loomed, cloaked in dark Irish wool and a brooding disposition. “What? I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening.”

“Clearly. You don’t think he’s stupid enough to camp out in Clapham and wait for you, do you?”

“No. I think he’s brilliant enough,” she mumbled from the rim of her mug. And beautiful enough. And every other descriptor in the B category, including a bloody fucking idiot. He just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could he? Not poke the bear or tempt fate. Or tempt her with his hair and bespoke suits - another damned B adjective he owned, body and soul.

Styles may have changed in one hundred plus years, but those eyes, prisms of blue, green, and gray, stayed the same. Even as they shifted through his moods, their essence was unforgettable. She’d carried the memory of those twin kaleidoscopes in her heart for decades.

His cheekbones, too; high, angular zygomatic arches that bordered on severe, shadowing his face if he’d forgotten to eat or remembered to shoot up. And his hands. Like marbles lifted from the Rodin. "Bollocks," she groaned. His entire visage was a carbon copy of the man she’d known in 1895.

_Loved._

Molly’s nail beds emitted the slight bluish glow that always accompanied a vampire’s desire. If she continued with this line of thought, she’d convulse, have to feed immediately. It was too late to switch off the sensory assault though. The memories always piqued her hunger. Soon there’d be nothing left to do but hunt.

_Him._

“Molly,” her host sighed, exasperated, “How do you mean brilliant?”

“Sorry. I was just thinking.”

“About Mr. Brilliant.” her companion smirked.

Molly sucked in a deep breath, expelled it and her displeasure out her nostrils. “Sherlock knows I won’t go back to my flat because I'll assume he’s waiting for me. So, he’ll be there.”

“I still don’t follow.”

“You know, for a trained assassin, Mary, you’re not much at strategy.”

Mary laughed, one of those boisterous noises Molly remembered from when the woman was alive, brimming with mischief and so much love to give. “Correction, my dear. I’m not much at the methods two brainiacs in love employ to outwit each other.”

“I just want to keep him out of harm’s way,” she said tartly. “I’m not in love. I can't be. _I'm_ the harm. Don't you see?”

“I’m not convinced,” Mary whispered, attempting to soothe.

“Well, _he’s_ not in love,” Molly countered.

“Again, not convinced,” she smiled. A soft, warm glow settled around them despite the fact that both women were, in fact, dead. “So, come on then, girl,” she slapped Molly on the knee, “What strategy?”

“He’ll be at my flat because he thinks that _I think_ he’ll be there. And, because he knows that I think him too brilliant for that particular course of action, I’ll return home thinking him tucked safely away at Baker Street, nursing his wounds rather than being stupid enough to hide inside my wardrobe or behind the door to the loo.”

Mary nodded her head, trying to keep up with Molly’s rapid-fire delivery. “Hang on. If you ultimately know he’ll be there. And he’s preparing for your imminent arrival. Why wouldn’t you just stay here with me and formulate a plan for escape?”

Because he was brilliant and beautiful. And belligerent and barmy.

“Because I love him, Mary.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know my dates/timeline are fuzzy on Oxford House & Molly's age when she was alive but I'm not going for dead-on period/timeline accuracy. Just tryin' to have a little fun - and point out what a badass Molly has always been :)


End file.
